NASA imaging shows Arctic sea ice at its 2016 maximum of 5.607 million square miles, the lowest on record. AP

The Arctic Report Card is here — and the heat is on to find a stop to the massive decline in sea ice and snow.

The report, sponsored by the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found unprecedented temperatures this year in the Arctic contributed to a record-breaking delay in the annual freeze — prompting extensive melting of the Greenland ice sheet and land-based snow cover.

“Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year,” said Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program. “While the science is becoming clearer, we need to improve and extend sustained observations of the Arctic that can inform sound decisions on environmental health and food security as well as emerging opportunities for commerce.”

The report – now in its 11th year – found that the annual average of surface air temperature over Arctic land from October 2015 through September was 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was in 1900, warming at twice the rate of global temperatures.

“Part of the extreme was due to especially warm air coming from the south during the winter of 2016,” according to a 3-minute video on the report. “Arctic minimum sea ice extent at the end of summer was tied with 2007 for the second-lowest amount during the satellite record starting in 1979, at 33 percent below the long-term average.”

The Arctic ice pack, according to the clip, remains “young and thin,” and is more susceptible to melting during summer months than the thicker, strong ice pack recorded during the 1980s.

Less ice cover leads to more solar heating throughout the Arctic Ocean, and ocean photosynthesis increases as more light penetrates into the water, ultimately resulting in “changes at the base of the ocean food chain,” according to the video.

The report also found a record low of snow cover in the North American Arctic, where snow in May fell over less than 1.5 million square miles for the first time since satellite observations there began in 1967.

And in Greenland, the ice sheet continued to lose mass this year, as it has for every year since satellite-based measurements began there in 2002, according to the report.

NOAA

The warming temperatures across the Arctic are also causing ground that’s normally frozen to thaw. That carbon-rich permafrost is a source of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane when it thaws — and evidence now shows that northern permafrost zone soils contain up to 1,580 billion tons of organic carbon, or about twice as much as that currently found in the atmosphere.

“Tundra ecosystems are taking up increasingly more carbon during the growing season over the past several decades, but this has been offset by increasing carbon loss during the winter,” the report’s executive summary reads. “Overall, tundra appears to be releasing net carbon to the atmosphere.”

The changes have already affected some Arctic species, namely the shrew. According to the report, some of the small mammals have recently acquired new parasites, indicating poleward shifts of sub-Arctic faunas and increases in biodiversity.

The “rapid, unprecedented rates” of change in the Arctic make the region “home to and a cause for a global suite” of trillion-dollar impacts, ranging from global trade to changing ecosystems to national security concerns, according to the report.

“In summary, new observations indicate that the entire interconnected Arctic environmental system is continuing to be influenced by long-term upward trends in global carbon dioxide and air temperatures, modulated by regional and seasonal natural variability,” the video concludes.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that some scientists are already preparing for something of a data day of reckoning. Worried that decades of key climate data could disappear once President-elect Donald Trump takes office, some researchers from Toronto to the University of Pennsylvania have begun efforts to copy or download as much federal data as possible in coming weeks.

Some scientists were reacting after Trump, among other moves, confirmed last week that he will nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to the lead the Environmental Protection Agency, which he has repeatedly sued and claimed pursued an “activist agenda.” Pruitt, in turn, said he planned to run the agency in a “way that fosters both responsible protection of the environment and freedom for American businesses,” according to a statement released by Trump’s transition team.

Nick Santos, an environmental researcher at the University of California at Davis, said he began copying government climate data onto a nongovernment server over the weekend. The data will remain available to the public, he said.

“Something that seemed a little paranoid to me before all of a sudden seems potentially realistic, or at least something you’d want to hedge against,” Santos told the Washington Post. “Doing this can only be a good thing. Hopefully they leave everything in place. But if not, we’re planning for that.”